[PaulHoule]

That bit about Golden Rice is a crock.

I'm not saying it couldn't play a positive role or that I think it is dangerous, but there are (1) many ways to get Vitamin A, (2) many problems in global nutrition other than Vitamin A. Trying to picture the developers like Prometheus getting their liver torn out every day just isn't helpful. The fact that they got 100 Nobel Prize winners to sign their petition is bunk because very few of them know about agronomy or the problems of marketing technology in the developing world.

Specifically: Golden Rice has to compete in terms of all the agronomic and gastronomic variables that matter to farmers and consumers. They aren't going to put up with worse yield, drought tolerance, etc. just for this one trait. The first version of Golden Rice didn't have a lot of Vitamin A, though the second version does.

There have been efforts across the last 50 years or so to get people in rural areas to switch to better cookstoves that are a great case study in just how hard it can be to get people in the developing world to adopt something new. It can be done, but Greenpeace is the least of the obstacles that they face.

[ToValueFunfetti]

Greenpeace sued successfully to make it illegal. It's hard to imagine how anything can be a greater obstacle, regardless of whether there are additional obstacles- it's a brick wall.

The additional obstacles you've listed all do seem less significant and more surmountable than not being allowed to grow the crop at all. And I can't find any evidence of the yield or drought tolerance actually being worse.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-82001-0

[PaulHoule]

Illegal in the Philippines. After years of struggle developing a product that (1) really worked and (2) anybody wanted. There are 200+ other countries in the world.

It's approved in the U.S., Canada and other countries but they don't sell it. Given that they are politicizing it so much you think they might grow 10 tons of it somewhere and sell small quantities of it so people could try it out ("get a $20 bag of rice and support its development") but (a) it defeats the narrative they're being victimized by Greenpeace and (b) people may or may not like the sensory characteristics.

I don't know how the GR2 trait itself impacts other agronomic characteristics but there is a principle that if an organism is spending energy on one thing it is going to have less for other things. A more definitely problem is that a small number of GR2 seed lines compete with a very large number of other rice lines. Even if the GR2 trait is neutral in other respects, the GR2 rice that is actually developed could be "ok" but not competitive with other seeds you could get.

In the US there is a staggering variety of Bt corn or Roundup-Ready soybean seeds because the technology has been licensed to and picked up by most of the big seed vendors so farmers can get seeds that perform well for them. Farmers want these crops because they help their bottom line. If somebody tries to ban them, they'll fight back.

PRRI doesn't have a lot of resources to develop a variety of optimized seeds, it doesn't have the deep relationships with seed vendors that (say) Monsanto has, it doesn't have a lot of enthusiasm from possible customers in the Philippines. If local farmers, public health authorities and such had organized to support it there could have been a different outcome. As it is PRRI comes across as another out-of-touch NGO.

There are all kinds of little silly things such as the fact that they will start charging you if you grow more than $10,000 worth of it. If they really are out to save people from illness, change the world, and normalize the idea of transgenic crops, they should be giving it away for free.

[giantg2]

The thing that I haven't been able to really understand, is why aren't these areas able to grow other vitamin A rich crops? The climate and environment is usually fine for growing something - yams, mangos, cantaloupe, carrots, etc. I can see that sometimes it's a cost thing as those sell for higher prices or are more expensive to preserve than rice. But it seems that farmers stick with regular rice because that's what they know and are set up to do. Maybe switching to golden rice is easier since the fields are the same, but things like yield and such could be a barrier. Maybe it would be better to create a program train/pay for additonal farms or conversion of existing farms into other vitamin A rich crops. Increasing supply could reduce the price and make it more affordable. Or is it partially an education thing, where consumers don't know they're deficient? Maybe we need more education there. In any case, it's seems very complex, beyond just the rice.

[Retric]

People most in need of vitamin A don’t realize or can’t pay a premium for something else.

Ignorance is a big part of why foods get fortified. Scurvy is making something of a comeback among wealthy kids eating an unhealthy diet because high temperatures destroys Vitamin C so you need to eat un/minimally cooked foods or have it added back in. https://www.timesofisrael.com/scurvy-makes-a-shocking-comeba...

[triceratops]

I think the unhealthy diet is the fundamental reason, not cooking food at high temps.

"The amount of vitamin C retained from raw potatoes varied according to the method of cooking, e.g. about 80% for potatoes boiled in skin and about 30% for hash-browned potatoes."

Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03155...

[Retric]

Both of those are at the low end of cooking time * temperature. Mashed potatoes provide essentially zero vitamin C same with many potato soups. https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/170699/n...

365 calories of raw potatoes have 155% of your daily vitamin C requirement. A 365 calories serving of French fries has ~9% of your daily vitamin C requirements. Of course the cooking oil is part of that difference, but few cooked foods have much vitamin C. Worse many things like rice, bread, or beer provide none.

So you need some aspect of your diet to be a plentiful supply or take a supplement.

[lumost]

Related to this, many rural farms in the developing world grow heirloom crops of one kind or another. Classic examples of this are Peru's 30k varieties of Potato. Saying that Golden Rice is superior to all of the varieties of rice grown in the developing world seems like a stretch.

[Aunche]

I think there is plenty of reason to be skeptical of do-gooder foreigners who think they know better than the locals, but IMO that describes Greenpeace here more than the golden rice project. They are banning it completely, taking agency away from local farmers and consumers. Also, most of their objections seem to stem from GM fearmongering disguised as environmental and nutritional concerns. I doubt that they would fight golden rice if it were a hybrid crop instead.